One of Scotland’s best crime-fiction writers, Denise Mina, is out with a new one titled “Field of Blood.” In nonfiction, look for “A Man Without a Country,” a collection of musings from Kurt Vonnegut. John Grisham has released “The Summons” in paper and in the not-too-distant future, you can look for Nadine Gordimer’s latest novel, “Get a Life.”
FICTION
“Field of Blood,” by Denise Mina, Little, Brown, 354 pages $24.95|Two young boys are arrested in the death of a 3-year-old and 18-year-old reporter Paddy Meehan sensing something is not right in the investigation.
“The Darwin Conspiracy,” by John Darnton, Knopf, 303 pages, $24.95|Darnton’s take on Darwin is that the author of “The Origin of Species” was a fraud and a murderer.
“A Breath of Snow and Ashes,” by Diana Gabaldon, Dell, 992 pages, $28|In the sixth in a series, Jamie Fraser is sent to the American colonies to help quell a rebellion, but since he has traveled back in time he knows how the rebellion turns out.
NONFICTION
“A Man Without a Country,” by Kurt Vonnegut, Seven Stories Press, 192 pages, $23.95|The 82-year-old author still has his sense of black humor in this collection of essays.
“Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires,” by Selwyn Raab, St. Martin’s, 784 pages, $27.95|Raab renders the byzantine history of New York’s five families – Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese – easily comprehensible to any lay reader.
“Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush vs. Gore,” by James T. Patterson, Oxford University Press, 480 pages, $35|A survey of the political, economic, foreign policy, social, and cultural trends and events during the presidencies of Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton.
PAPERBACKS
“The Summons,” by John Grisham, Delta, 304 pages, $13|Two brothers reunite -after their father dies – to split up his property according to a will. But the will doesn’t account for a fortune in cash found in the house.
“Villages,” by John Updike, Ballantine, 336 pages, $14.95|A man recalls a lifetime spent among many women in a small New England town. This is Updike’s 21st novel.
“The Devil’s Highway,” by Luis Alberto Urrea, Back Bay, 272 pages, $13.95|Many illegal immigrants die in the desert along the border of the U.S. and Mexico. Urrea concentrates on one such incident in the Sonoran Desert.
COMING UP
“Get a Life,” by Nadine Gordimer, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 160 pages, $20, December|A South African ecologist is stricken with Alzhei-
mers and learns that he is a danger to others.
“Memories of My Melancholy Whores,” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Knopf, 112 pages, $20, October|A legendary lover decides at 90 to give himself one more night with an adolescent prostitute.
“Are Men Necessary?” by Maureen Dowd, Penguin, 352 pages, $25.95, November|The acerbic New York Times columnist moves from the political wars to the battle of the genders.
